The case for equal pay is clear in U.S. soccer

It is difficult to understand the argument that the United States women’s national soccer team should get paid just as much as the men’s national soccer team.

The women are much more successful. They should earn more.

On Sunday, the 23 women selected to represent the U.S. at the 2019 World Cup triumphed over the Netherlands to complete a dominating run to victory.

It is the second straight time the U.S. has won the quadrennial tournament.

During the celebrations, fans chanted “equal pay,” highlighting the fact that the U.S. Soccer Federation, which employs the members of the men’s and women’s national teams, has long paid larger sums to the men. Megan Rapinoe, honored as the World Cup’s top scorer and best player, used her moment in the spotlight to call on United States Soccer to “set things right for the future” by giving the women’s team a raise.

Rapinoe and her teammates have also gone to court, suing the federation in March for gender discrimination. The suit says United States Soccer also invests less in the team’s practice facilities, travel arrangements and medical care.

It is an embarrassment that United States Soccer has failed to address this injustice, allowing the joy of celebrations to be tainted by the reality of unfair treatment.

Pay comparisons are complicated because the men’s and women’s teams have separately negotiated contracts.

Members of the women’s team are paid by the federation to play in the National Women’s Soccer League, on top of which they receive payments for playing for the national team. The men just get national team payments.

Under the current contract for the women’s team, the women and

the men would earn the same amount if both national teams played 20 games — and lost all 20 games. With each victory, however, the men’s team would enjoy a larger advantage.

The women can earn more in a given year, as they are likely to do this year. But that is only because they achieved so much. For comparable success, the women get less.

Even by this measure, there is a case that the women are being wronged. It is not clear, for example, how United States Soccer treats sponsorships that cover both teams.

But revenue is the wrong measuring stick. United States Soccer is a nonprofit, exempted from taxation because it serves a social purpose: “To make soccer, in all its forms, a pre-eminent sport in the United States.”

It should be obvious to the people who run the federation that the women’s team is fulfilling that mission at least as well as the men’s team.

The women’s soccer team, like other national teams, also represents the United States. The women who wear the nation’s colors are ambassadors on an international stage.

Their performances inform perceptions of the U.S. Millions of people around the world watched Sunday as a team of strong and skillful women played a game with determination and sportsmanship, and then celebrated freely.

Pay gaps are a persistent problem in American society. The case of the national soccer teams is merely an unusually clear and public example of the issue.

United States Soccer and its 28 female players suing for gender discrimination have agreed to enter mediation in the hopes of resolving the players’ lawsuit. The federation now has the opportunity to create its own clear and public example — by finally doing the right thing. Members of The Denver Post’s editorial board are Megan Schrader, editor of the editorial pages; Lee Ann Colacioppo, editor; Justin Mock, CFO; Bill Reynolds, vice president of circulation and production; Bob Kinney, vice president of information technology; and TJ Hutchinson, systems editor.